was anyone afraid to serve divorce papers?

[Anonymous]

I moved out over a year ago so I'm not in any physical danger, but we are co-parenting a young child and I'm so afraid of how STBX will react to actually receiving divorce papers. He's verbally abusive and tells my daughter that I'm a bad mother. I gave him drafts of the divorce papers last week and told him I am going to file so that it doesn't come out of the blue. Hoping that helps the situation.

Has anyone been afraid of how their spouse would react, and then once they filed it wasn't as bad as expected? When I gave him the papers he warned me that if I file, he will take me to court and make sure not a penny of our assets are left after all is said and done. I should mention we don't have any assets other than our house.